Memories of Years Gone By
by LadyofDodge
Summary: "Thirty years have passed since that long ago summer when Matt Dillon first came into my life. My boyhood hero worship is gone now..." A long-time citizen of Dodge reminisces about the marshal.


**Memories of Years Gone By **

**NOTE: This fic was written for a challenge in which the assignment was to show a major character from the point of view of a minor character. The speaker (I named him George) in this story appears in the episode "Bloody Hands," and he was indeed minor—in every sense of the word. However, it is as an adult that he now recalls his "Memories of Years Gone By."**

I was just seven years old that long ago summer when my family moved to Dodge City, Kansas.

My brother and I were city kids, accustomed to playing stick ball in the brick streets of Reading, Pennsylvania, surrounded by the tall smoke stacks of the steel and knitting mills that dominated the jagged skyline. But our Pa didn't work in those mills. He was a brakeman on the railroad, and he moved us west that summer of 1875 when the cattle were streaming into Dodge to be loaded onto the Santa Fe, heading for the slaughter houses of Chicago and St. Louis.

So there we were-Andy and I-two unhappy and lonely little boys on the hot, dusty and pungent streets of this strange and ugly little town. We'd been in Dodge only a few months when the marshal, the biggest man I'd ever seen in my life, asked my brother and me if we'd like to spend an afternoon "tracking" with him and some of the town kids. Well, Andy and I had no idea what "tracking" meant but, not wanting to appear stupid, and desperately looking for something to do, we said sure, we'd love to.

Ma didn't like us wanderin' too far from home in this unfamiliar and uncivilized place, but since the marshal was with us-although rumor was he had just quit his job-she knew she didn't have to worry about us and gave us permission to go with him and two other boys about our age.

To this day I can see us as we hiked out into the country for a couple of miles, all of us traipsing in a line behind that huge man who tried to adjust his long strides to accommodate our shorter ones. I tried to walk in his footsteps. I could put my two feet heel to toe in one of his prints with plenty of room to spare. Of course, I realize now that only a handful of grown men could ever walk in Matt Dillon's footsteps—and I don't mean that just literally.

Andy and I didn't talk much that day because everything was so new and different to us, but we sure learned a lot. And we made new friends, too. The four of us- Billy and David, my brother and I-we spent that summer playing together and remained friends for the next dozen or so years until one by one, we all went our separate ways. I went back east to study veterinary medicine at The University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, a classmate and I set up practice in a little farming community just outside of Philadelphia, but before long this sun-baked, wind-blown prairie started calling me home, and I sold my share of the practice and came back home to become the very first veterinarian Dodge City had ever seen.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back in '75 Dodge was still a wild and wooly place, but the way the old-timers told it, things had been a lot worse a few years earlier-before the government in Washington, D.C. saw fit to send a United States Marshal to clean things up.

I have to assume my parents had a few discussions about our moving west and where we would live when we got here. I know for sure Ma wanted to live north of the deadline in the "genteel" part of town, the part where no guns were allowed. But Pa said we couldn't afford that. So at first we stayed at Ma Smalley's Boarding House. After we'd been there a while, Pa bought a house just a few doors down the street. That suited Andy and me just fine because by then we had learned our way around town and had become friends with Billy and David and a few of the other kids. Of course, we also liked the idea of living on the south side of the tracks where all the action was even if Ma didn't cotton too much to the idea.

I can remember seeing stacks of buffalo hides taller than I was lining the lower end of Front Street and the filthy buffalo hunters and hiders coming into town to ply their trade. They were a crazy breed and fun to watch. But my favorites were the cowboys.

Poor Ma-she tried to keep Andy and me indoors when the herds were in town but, try as she might, we always managed to elude her and slip out into the street for a peek at those fast-riding, hard-drinking, quick-drawing Texans who each year brought their longhorns up the Chisholm to Dodge.

Of course, while we were watching the cowboys, we also managed to sneak a look into the saloons lining Front Street-the Bull's Head, the Texas Trail and, of course, the Long Branch, which we always heard was the biggest and best of the Dodge saloons. That must have been true because there always seemed to be a lot more men in there than in any of the other establishments.

One of my favorite tricks was to wait for a really crowded Saturday night when the Long Branch was packed and noisy. Then I'd shimmy under that batwing door and hide under the nearest poker table, just listening to the talk and the sound of that tinny old piano. To this day, the opening bars of "O, Susannah" or "Camp Town Races" can put a smile on my face.

I didn't understand half of what I heard and saw in there, but it sure was exciting to be part of it for a while. 'Course the marshal always spotted me and escorted me into the street by the seat of my pants. He always threatened to tell Ma if he ever caught me in there again—and once he actually did tell her—but I think he secretly got a kick out of hauling me out from under the table and giving me a lecture.

The marshal seemed to like us town kids—he always asked how we were doing in school, told us to work hard, and he made sure our squabbles never got out of hand. In addition to that tracking trip, he took us fishing at least once every summer, and one fall he and Mr. Quint, the blacksmith, even took us hunting.

And he taught us about guns, too. I was never much interested in `em myself—I preferred hanging around the stables, currying the horses, even mucking out the stalls—but Andy, Billy and David, they were crazy about guns, and when the marshal found them playing with Pa's old army pistol in the alley one morning, we all got a fast and serious lecture about the place and purpose of guns in our lives. Man, I hadn't even touched that old gun, but I got reamed out right along with the others.

Then he said that if we were so fascinated with guns, he would make sure we knew how to handle them and handle ourselves, too. For the next couple a months, every Saturday morning that he was in town, we'd ride out to Old Dodge Town, and he'd teach us how to shoot, load, clean, carry and take care of a gun. I'd try a little target practice once in a while, but shooting just didn't interest me all that much. Still, I always went along just so I could hang out with our giant playmate and friend.

I was, however, involved in the great whiskey caper. Billy and I were coming home from school one afternoon and, for some reason-who knows why kids decide to do the things they do-we decided to go through the trash behind the Long Branch looking for bottles that still had a few dregs at the bottom. Sure enough, we found several, and we sat down in the alley to savor our find. Let's just say it doesn't take a lot of whiskey to get two twelve year olds stumbling drunk…and sick!

So Billy and I were sitting among the barrels and bottles, laughing and crying and throwing up all at the same time. I guess we made so much noise they heard us inside. Well, the marshal came out that back door and picked me up in one huge hand and Billy in the other. He dipped his own bandana into the rain barrel and wiped our faces. He was really nice with us, and I thought we had gotten off easy. Hah! When he saw that we were starting to feel somewhat better, he settled us against the side of the building while he stood towering over us and gave us a lecture that I remember to this day.

We said we just wanted to see what it felt like to be men, and he said drinking whiskey and getting drunk doesn't make a boy a man-said it doesn't make a man a man either.

With the false bravado of my newly inebriated state, I asked if wearing a gun doesn't make you a man, and if drinking doesn't make you a man, just what does make you a man?

Well, he hunkered down to our level, pushed that big Stetson back on his head, and fixed us with a look that would make even the most hardened outlaws confess their crimes and beg for mercy. He said, "George, you wanna know what makes a man a man, look around you. Look at your pa, look at Festus Haggen, look at Doc Adams. These are real men. They're honest, decent, hard-working, law-abiding citizens. They treat women with respect and they're kind to children. That's what makes a man a man, not guns and whiskey, not swearing and swaggering and carousing. Anyone can do that. It takes honesty and fairness and kindness to be a real man." When I thought about it later, I knew he had left one important name off that list of role models—Marshal Matt Dillon.

Oh, he could give us kids a good talking to whenever he thought we needed it, probably Andy and me more than a lot of the kids 'cause Pa was away so much with his job. Yeah, the marshal set us straight a few times, but he was always kind and fair-and one more thing that's real important when you're a kid—he never talked down to us. Fact is, he didn't talk much a'tall (picked that up from him), just showed us by quiet example, and he was a hero to us kids. We copied his every move and vowed we would be just like him when we grew up.

My brother Andy did just that. Andy deputied right here in Dodge under Marshal Dillon and then went up to Ellsworth to be sheriff...says he's going to apply to the War Department for a marshal's job soon as one becomes available again.

Of course, Marshal Dillon's main job wasn't to entertain us kids, but to keep the peace, not only in Dodge City but in the surrounding territory as well, so he was often away for days—sometimes weeks—at a time. It seemed as if every time he was away, someone would show up looking to cause trouble.

But the incident I recall most vividly happened when he was right here. Guess I was about eleven then. A large gang of gunmen, led by an outlaw named Mace Gore, rode into Dodge, made the Long Branch its headquarters and took over the town. The marshal was kinda powerless to do much because he didn't want any of the townspeople getting hurt or killed.

I remember those outlaws going door to door in the middle of the night—they came to our house, too—waking folks up and confiscating money, jewelry, guns, anything of value. They shot Marshal Dillon and left him for dead in the street. Those who were right there and saw it, they talked for weeks about how he took four bullets and just lay there, not moving. Some swore he wasn't even breathing. Others said they heard old Doc Adams say there was nothing he could do, and then he walked away and Mr. Crump, the undertaker, came and got the marshal.

Of course, we found out later that was a ruse, but I sure was sad and scared when word spread through town that our big marshal was gone. As I recall, he spent several weeks at the Long Branch Saloon recovering from his wounds. I thought that was kind of odd, and I asked Ma why he was there and not up at Doc's, but all she said was, "Never you mind."

That brings me to another point. It's just not possible to talk about the marshal without talking about Miss Kitty Russell, too. She owned the Long Branch way before we ever moved to Dodge. Still does for that matter.

Now I can't say for sure what was, or is, between those two, but I do know that one night when I was about 16 or 17, Andy and I had taken Jenny and Maria Ronniger home after a barn dance. We dropped the buggy off at the livery stable, and we were taking the short cut home, walkin' down the alley behind the Long Branch. There were no gas lights back there, but that big lawman's kind of hard to mistake, even in the dark. We saw him take those back stairs two at a time, and when he got to the top, he reached for something in his vest pocket and then opened the balcony door and went right in. We knew it was Miss Kitty's balcony 'cause we often saw her shaking her rugs out there. Andy and me—we just nudged each other and grinned—lucky marshal!

I still remember the day I fell in love with Miss Kitty. I was 10, and I had been knocked down on Front Street by a run-away horse. First thing I saw when I came to was this beautiful redheaded angel holding a cold cloth on my head and stroking my arm. Found out later that Doc Adams was out of town and Ma wasn't home, so Miss Kitty had Mr. Sam carry me up to her spare bedroom, and she tended to me herself until Ma got back. Man, that was something! I was young, but I thought I'd died and gone to heaven that day.

One last thing. When I came back to Dodge after college and a few years as a vet back in Pennsylvania, I happily discovered that pretty Jenny Ronniger was still unmarried and living on the family farm. We took to courtin' and eventually decided to marry. Pa had died a few years earlier, so I went to Marshal Dillon for advice. It sounds kind of funny now that I think about it, to ask the town's most confirmed bachelor for marital advice. But that's exactly what I did.

Anyway, he nailed me with those piercing blue eyes and said, "Always treat her right, son. There's nothing better can happen to a man than to spend his life with the lady he loves, but always remember, she's not your property and you're not entitled. Love her, respect her, cherish her and take care of her every day of your lives…and try to never, ever let her down."

Maybe that's why he and Miss Kitty have lasted all these years. I don't know. The marshal retired a few years ago, and everyone thought that when he finally took off the badge, he would head for the "high country" and his beloved outdoors, but he laughed and said he'd been civilized too long to go back there now. The truth, I suspect, is he just couldn't stand the thought of living anywhere without Miss Kitty. She bought a little house just on the edge of town and, eventually, he moved in with her. They've sort of become Dodge City's "national treasures," and everyone treats them with love and respect. There's probably not a single person in this town whose life wasn't touched by one or both of them at some time or other.

Thirty years have passed since that long ago summer when Matt Dillon first came into my life. My boyhood hero worship is gone now, replaced by an unending respect for this legend of the old west who earned his name and fame not by the number of men he killed, but by the way he lived his life—with honor, with dignity, and with respect and fairness for all.


End file.
